The story of Julia and Jane's deliciously agonizing wait is played in the round, in the Community Room of the Freeport Library. This staging allows us to see the women in a much more interesting array of tableaux, as they play to all four sides, than would be possible with straight proscenium staging. Looking at the women from ever-changing perspectives — from the front, side, and behind; along oblique angles of clenched jaw lines — gives us an intimate sense of their distress, and of how surrounded they feel by their own unrelenting obsessions. Steele's blocking of the show is striking for how gracefully and revealingly he moves his actors about the space, in and out of confrontation with each other, without ever causing us (or at least this viewer) to feel neglected for another side of the audience. We observe the friends' drunken arc sometimes straight-on and sometimes as if from sneakier angles, with an increasingly god-like smirk.
The spectrum of the characters' own omniscience and dullness involves plenty of poking fun and irony. For example, the vast wisdom and life experience of the maid Saunders becomes a running joke, and Myles-Hunkin's secret smile and husky voice are a gorgeous contrast to the upper-class women's insecurities. And as for their befuddled English men — well, imagine, that their wives could have had lives pre-them! With wit and sumptuous staging, Freeport Players sends up the vanities of the whole crew — and those women certainly do get their fireworks.
Megan Grumbling can be reached at mgrumbling@hotmail.com.
FALLEN ANGELS | by Noel Coward | Directed by William Steele | Produced by the Freeport Players, at the Freeport Library | through March 29 | 207.865.2220
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